Just for clarification, I meant he data being collected via PRISM was not via backdoors.  There are some backdoors in Microsoft operating systems which would allow connectivity and I don't think anyone can honestly say they no how often that stuff is actually used, but framed from the stand point of PRISM it appears (unsurprisingly) that the front line of data collection/spying is generally just asking for data and the likelihood of data staying private that is on your local hard drive is extremely high while the likelihood of data stored "in the cloud" staying private is extremely low.

Paul Mooring
Operations Engineer
www.opscode.com

________________________________________
From: plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org on behalf of joe@actionline.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 10:02 AM
To: plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
Subject: RE: Time to move to Linux  ~  Well said, Paul.

Well said, Paul ... but would you please clarify one point?

You said that there are "no crazy backdoors," but is it not true that M$
(and the NSA) can look at and/or extract/retrieve any data that they
might want from any M$ operating system based computer that is connected
to the Internet?  Perhaps you already acknowledged that in your comment
that any "data you put on the Internet is not private;" because,
connecting any M$ os based computer to the Internet is, no doubt,
"putting" all of that computer's data on the Internet.

Is it not true that M$ (with their proprietary (and hidden code)
operating system) can "look" undetected into any M$ os based computer
connected to the Internet, wherein M$ has given themselves read and write
"privileges" to "update," etc.; and is it true or not true that they have
embedded a special NSA-KEY as described in this article that was recently
shared on this PLUG list:
www.wnd.com/2013/06/nsa-has-total-access-via-microsoft-windows/


------------------------
Paul last wrote, in part:
> ... If you have a
> fully patched Linux desktop with no externally listening services, no one
> (not even the NSA) can get in without going to extreme lengths.  People
> are so frightened by the PRISM controversy that they aren't acknowledging
> that it's great insight into how the government really does gather data,
> they ask for it while holding a really big gun.  There was no crazy
> backdoors or complex exploits involved, they just told companies that had
> data to give it to them and the companies complied.  The lesson we should
> be learning from this is that data you put on the Internet is not
> private, ever.


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